there is no elsewhere
by RosalieOfGallifrey
Summary: A drabble series, originally posted anonymously in thestarkinhighgarden's inbox, about remnants, whispers, and the Republic of Heaven.
1. Botanic

_-Botanic-_

It was an odd little bench. The girl was odd, too-that girl with her arm around air and her eyes wide open and her daemon yearning for the touch of a lover and her spark of consciousness focused and pulled into a knife that cut cut cut that Spectral wall and hugged and hugged and loved and they were forever atoms entwining worlds together and apart. They blinked, the girl and the daemon; stood up and blinked memory-not-tears. The Dust in the air sparkled and the wind whispered a far far far-away exhalation that might have been a name. The sun gleamed on retreating backs, and the world was still.


	2. Amber

-_Amber_-

Some nights, Atal sees night-pictures.  
She must live in whimsy, surely, for how could the font, the life-blood of every zalif possibly grow sunward and strong with the other-sraf of the other-world? Mulefa are practical beings. Yet Atal finds herself lost in amber more often than not, lost in harshly musical speech and arms in the place of a trunk. She wakens with those fascinating, grasping, alien fingers around her neck, speeding toward wheel-pod trees and away from swarms-for what else to call the defiling pestilence of the tualapi-and all the time feeling home.  
_Ghost-fingers on a ghost-dream_, she thinks. But ghosts are as real as the red on sweet berries, and the mulefa know this best of all. And so Atal waits, and sraf falls into flowers, and pods turn on the lava-smoothed earth, and Mary Malone thinks of the day when, perhaps, she might tell a story and walk into the light of Shadows and friends and green.


	3. Silvertongue

_-Silvertongue-_

One year, with Dame Hannah's permission, Lyra and Pantalaimon travelled to New Denmark; adventuring South, this time, to a land where the grasses swayed and the sun rose high over farms and the people spoke of a great aeronaut, a self-made man sailing off to battle savage beasts found only in those particular nighttime stories which children both craved and feared. One popular tale told of a brave hero in the far-off North of Europa, fighting alongside wolves in armor and saving a plucky youngster from the clutches of cannibals. The Texan woman who spun this yarn spoke so like Hester that Lyra would've cried, if she were the crying type. But Lyra wasn't, and Mr Scoresby wouldn't like her upset on his account, and Pan reminded her that she ought not to draw such attention to herself. So Lyra sat back in her host's rocking chair and listened as words wove themselves into the fabrics of time, and as she listened she watched with sleep-heavy eyes a single anbaric light flickering in a corner, and clasped her arms around Pan's soft torso, and, at long last, made peace.


	4. Atoms

_-Atoms-_

A short slip of paper lay gently on the wooden bench, clipped from one of those few newspapers still pressing copies in the manner of so many years before. The paper was aging just as its subject had, curling and yellowing, fading and flaking, ink running until the words were barely visible. _"William Parry, longtime patron of the historic University of Oxford Botanic Garden, died yesterday aged 83. He will be remembered-"_  
But the rest was lost in the blankness of oblivion, remaining only in the quiet whisper of leaves and the life in blades of grass and the joy of the gleaming sun, waiting, always waiting, for a force more powerful than even a Subtle blade. And those remnants-those _Shadows_-wait always but not forever, for, one day, two atoms will cling together so tight, nothing and no one will be able to tear them apart.


	5. Autumn

_-Autumn-_

He does not speak the boy's name.  
Never his name, for that boy was carried away by a plague into a burst of beautiful, terrible daemon-light and he was a pain in the spirit too sharp, too deep-far, far more piercing than a poison arrow or the loneliness of a lost love. Speak the name, and that spark of indescribable grief would consume him utterly. And he could not, he dared not raise up the memory-not when there were children to think of: other, living children slipping from their parents' arms and into the golden embrace of the illness,_ the world_. Not when there was Lyra, who in her brash and passionate manner had made him a teacher, a mentor, and perhaps...perhaps a father again, too. And certainly not now that an inevitable meeting flew closer in black silks, on a branch of cloud-pine-there would be pain enough without a mention of the boy.  
Without a mention of their son.  
He supposed that his Sophonax should force him to think, force him to see and love and let go of his beautiful child's unlit eyes, yet the cat with the fur made of autumn was not only a conscience but a soul, and the soul feels grief most of all.  
They would understand. It was their grief, too.  
Farder Coram looked up at the Northern sky, and waited for a sign of love's return.


	6. Fossils

_-Fossils-_

Mary Malone, tired, awed, and still surprised to see sky-scrapers instead of wheel-pod trees, was located by the police three days after her return from Lyra's Oxford. She was detained immediately on a number of charges-she had, after all, destroyed sensitive equipment, impersonated a colleague, and accessed a secure area without permission. _(I had to, the Shadows told me. No, I'm a scientist. Yes, I can talk to angels.)_  
But mid-way through an interrogation that Mary was sure would leave her in either an institution or a high-security prison, she was momentarily left alone. And when the officers returned, they had respect in their eyes-respect and a burning curiosity. They were not to question her, they said-orders from on high.  
Mary suspected that "on high" might be a bit further up than the officers imagined.  
As she walked free into the light of a weak sun (too dim, too harsh, too real), an Alpine chough laughed on her shoulder. Mary laughed too, and for a moment the wonder of her ridiculous universe chased away the ghosts of longing for prairies and amber and claws so smooth that her fingers slipped and-  
And. And wheel-prints fossilized on a soul don't fade so easily.


	7. Three

_-Three-_

Elaine's little boy had been taken by the demons, those men who steal credit cards and watch in the market; Elaine's little boy didn't help her touch the slats today, and it took ever so long and there were always two missing; Elaine's little boy had taken his father's mantle and lifted it so high so high so high to the angels in a song that shouted _(whispered)_ blessing _(was it blessing a blessing a blessing)_ in threes.  
Three threes and Elaine's little boy had stepped through a window and back again and back again and back again and he forced through the fourth as a man. A name and then the crack of metal harsh with a burst of scorching love from Elaine's little-from Elaine's and then he was there and home and smelled of anywhere and mother mother mother-calling her, yes, calling her, calling her at last. Elaine's was home indeed, and his hand _(larger, callused, something wrong, something missing, they were_ missing_)_ slipped into hers and then the long coats were gone gone gone all forever and there was nothing but heart to hand to heart and she loved and she laughed and she shone because the coats were gone and the slats were quick and even because they were missing.  
They were missing, they were missing, they were missing, and she knew he was love because there were three three three left.


	8. Fortuna

_-Fortuna-_

Some nights, Will wondered at his fortune in meeting Lyra. If a car had moved differently, if the cat hadn't jumped, if the cafe hadn't been so quiet-perhaps they might've always been a whisper between universes, nothing more.  
Some nights, he thought of the worlds with their wounds bleeding Specters, and he wondered at fate, for both he and his father had walked through the Dust of the universe, and had become angel and Israel through the same turn of chance.  
And some nights, when Will hugged Kirjava close, he wondered whether _that cat_ might've had a friend called Xaphania.


End file.
